I am not really answering your specific question. The answer may lie more in what you ultimately enjoy doing in Eve. Stated differently, if you are still new, see what you like doing before committing time and skill points to your alts, you may find you headed off in the wrong direction.

That said, I took a “tie the characters all together” approach. It is not efficient nor is it really a moneymaker. It was a fun factor decision.

For whatever reason I really got into gas huffing. So rather than just sell the gas, what can you do with it? You make drugs (boosters) of course!

Alt 1 trained up reactions and manufacturing skills to make boosters. But what do you do with them now? You need the drug running alt!

Alt 2 trained up to blockade runner with appropriate market skills and runs drugs out to an appreciating clientele.

From a utilitarian point of view, look at alts as characters accomplishing any of these things:

- Speed up training time for separate things. One character can surely do everything in time, but if you train two characters in two separate things at once, you'll get there much faster.- Speed up getting things done by having two alts spreading the workload. Sometimes this can be done on the same account, if you're just lining up industrial or PI-work that will slowly progress on its own and only requires logins here and there. Other times it'll be a multiple-accounts type of thing with Omega as you only benefit from it if you're able to run both accounts at the same time.- Offload things you don't need to do on your main.- Convenience reasons, like making your own undeccable corp for tax- and war-evasion.

Being a newbro myself I spent litteraly days considering alts, training and career.

Would an exploration/ratter main be ideal? Well that depends on what you want to do in EVE long term, and that question is worth taking some time to consider while trying out little bit of everything - There is just so much to do in EVE!

1. You can fairly easy train into decent exploration, however as soon as you get to combat (either PVE or PVP) training, at least in my opinion, gets heavier.Personally I focus my main on "exactly" exploration/ratting (meaning exploration/combat (PVE and PVP) - basicly my philosofi is generally combat, exploration for quiet night relaxing, and ratting to fund all the fun.

2. I would highly recommand to train a hauler alt! A character not in E-UNI (to be unaffected by wars) that can quietly do your shopping runs.Personally I have moved to live with Project Solitude, but mMy guess is that no matter what campus you choise you will experience items that are inaccesible in your reginal market (or at a ridiculous price). For these occasions it is nice to have an alt that is specifically trained and has a jump clone in one or several tradehubs (let me here take the time to recommend Hek VIII - Moon 12 - Boundless Creation Factory it has almost everything you need and typically at lower prices than Jita).I use this setup myself + a second alt trained PI for slow steady income. All characters on same omega account.

3. Which faction you choose is personl preference. Your starting skill set differ slightly, but you can train any faction character in any direction you should desire. For example my main is Gallente (mostly because I like their story best), however I tend to prefer flying Caldari and Minmatar ships. It's all a matter of the skill que you put together.

Regarding skill que by the way... When I startet I was mostly recommended to start training the magic 14 to as high a lvl as possible. Nothing is wrong with the magic 14! They just don't provide you any of the fun stuff (ships and modules) I would therefor recommend you to focus on lvl 1-3 and then start training for what you really want to do. Then when you're starting to make a sturdy income - continue the magic 14, perhaps put them in que when you go on vacation or for whatever other reason you won't be able to log in for a week or two. That way it won't feel like you have "wasted" your time

OK, as I mentioned for a start - I'm a newbro myself thus this is based on my humble experience.Great you joined E-UNI and great that you ask questions. That itself is a good start in EVE Online!

the best setup for main and alts really depends on what corp you are in or want to get in.

In Uni, having explo and ratting skills on your main is fine, as part of a Null Bloc your main (and cap and fax alts) might be fighting a war far away from home and having a ratting alt might be interesting... Unless Olmeca Gold or Bombers Bar drop by to pay a visit...

Having an unaffiliated hauler alt is really useful in Uni, in a Nullsec bloc unaffiliated might mean dead, so you'll have to join somewhere to get at least blue.

In Uni an incursion alt is quite a bit better than flying Incursions with your Uni char due to wardecs and friendly fire.

My setup is Uni Main (Explo, a little PI and all kind of subcaps), OOC Hauler/Trade/PI/Industry/Research Alt, Uni PI/Industry/Research/Invention Alt on one Omega account and the OOC Incursion Alt on another Omega account - will decide what to do with the remaining two slots on there when the Incursion alt has finished training On Grid Booster role. I also have a few alpha accounts for various things like sitting in wormholes (and maybe some explo on the side) or sitting trade hubs.